[Dixielandjazz] Keely Smith R.I.P. London Guardian

[Robert Ringwald]

Keely Smith


American singer who, with her husband Louis Prima, was part of the most 
successful Las Vegas lounge act of the 1950s


by Peter Vacher

London Guardian, December 17, 2017


Standing to one side, her impassive basilisk stare part of the act, the 
singer Keely Smith, who has died aged 89, excelled as the onstage foil to 
her extrovert husband, the trumpeter-vocalist Louis Prima. Where Prima was 
manic, cavorting around the stage, singing with gusto and playing hot jazz 
trumpet, Smith was the epitome of cool, her vocals like a balm amid all the 
mayhem. Prima and Smith were the most successful Las Vegas lounge act of the 
1950s, playing season after season at the famed Sahara hotel with their 
supporting band, the Witnesses. Tourists loved them, as did the Rat Pack 
crowd and other celebrities. Barely a night passed, it seems, without Frank 
Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr bounding on stage to join the party.


Born Dorothy Keely in Norfolk, Virginia, she came from Cherokee and Irish 
stock. Her parents’ marriage foundered when she was nine, and her mother 
remarried Jesse Smith, from whom Keely later took her stage name. She first 
sang on a children’s radio show before performing with Saxie Dowell’s band 
at the local naval air station. At 15, she got her first paid job with the 
Earl Bennett band.


She had seen Prima perform when on a family holiday in Atlantic City in 
1947. The following year, she heard that he was playing nearby Virginia 
Beach, and that he was looking for a new vocalist, and so she auditioned. 
Prima hired her on the spot, and in 1953 she also became his fourth wife.


The New Orleans-born Prima had graduated from his home town to New York’s 
52nd Street in 1934, where his bandstand vitality made him a star. 
Reinventing himself as a comedic showman and simplifying his musical 
approach to take account of the burgeoning postwar interest in rhythm and 
blues, Prima needed a partner to offset his wild stage presence. Smith 
provided the show’s calm counterpoint, singing solo or in duet with Prima in 
a way that underlined her cool-jazz credentials. The musician and writer 
Leonard Feather described her as a “popular jazz-influenced 
comedienne-vocalist”.


Regularly playing five shows a night, starting at midnight and finishing at 
6am, with the ebullient tenor-saxophonist Sam Butera at their side, Smith 
and Prima ruled the Las Vegas roost as the perfect blend; the one 
controlled, the other agitated and raucous. Their fame spread across the US, 
fuelled by appearances on the Ed Sullivan show, their starring role in the 
1959 film Hey Boy! Hey Girl! and a slew of successful albums on the Capitol 
label, their version of That Old Black Magic receiving an inaugural Grammy 
in 1958. For all the “bizarre but funny” nature of their relationship, it 
seemed to work. That is, until Smith tired of Prima’s constant philandering 
and sued for divorce in 1961.


Although she continued to perform with Butera for a few years, Smith 
preferred to concentrate on raising her and Prima’s daughters, Toni and 
Luanne. Prima had insisted that she be awarded a solo contract by Capitol 
and this paid off for her. Her album with Nelson Riddle’s orchestrations, I 
Wish You Love, sold over a million copies and the single was nominated for a 
Grammy. Her songs also featured on the soundtracks of films by Martin 
Scorsese or starring Robert De Niro -- notably Raging Bull and Casino --  
both of whom had been long-time fans.


Her career under way again, Smith played sellout shows in cities across the 
US, her recordings including a well-received 1963 session with Count Basie’s 
orchestra. The following year, The Intimate Keely Smith (reissued last year) 
teamed her with a small jazz group, as did Keely Smith Sings the John Lennon 
and Paul McCartney Songbook, an album devoted to Beatles’ love songs, with 
arrangements by Benny Carter, and the later I’m In Love Again with jazzmen 
Bud Shank and Bill Perkins (1985).


The general revival of interest in swing and big band music in the 90s --  
typified by Gap’s use of the Prima-Smith classic Jump, Jive an’ Wail for a 
1998 TV ad campaign -- marked an intensification of interest in Smith, which 
she relished, and in 2001 she was again nominated for a Grammy, this time 
for the album Keely Sings Sinatra. In 2005 she was invited to appear at the 
House of Blues in LA, followed by a successful stint at Feinstein’s at the 
Regency in New York.


Later triumphs included a month at Cafe Carlyle in New York in 2007, a 
five-album deal with Concord records and an appearance at the 50th 
anniversary Grammy awards concert, where she sang That Old Black Magic with 
Kid Rock. She was also a popular presence on nostalgia-based package shows, 
including a rare UK appearance as guest of honour at Summertime Swing in 
East Grinstead, West Sussex, in August 2010.


Her career included performing for President John F Kennedy’s inauguration, 
the placement of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the award of the 
Cherokee medal of honour in 2000.


Hailed by Tony Bennett as “one of the greatest jazz-pop singers of all time”, 
Smith is survived by Toni and Luanne. Her third husband, the singer Bobby 
Milano, whom she married in 1975, died in 2006. An earlier marriage to the 
record producer Jimmy Bowen ended in divorce.

_____


Keely Smith (Dorothy Jacqueline Keely), jazz vocalist, born 9 March 1928; 
died 16 December 2017

___________________________________


Legendary Singer and Sinatra Crony Keely Smith Dies in Palm Springs


by Bruce Fessier

Palm Springs Desert Sun, December 17, 2017


Keely Smith, a Las Vegas legend and one of Palm Springs’ most popular 
singers in the era of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, died Saturday of heart 
failure after a long period of declining health. She was 89.


A family spokesman said she died in Palm Springs under a physician’s care. 
Funeral arrangements are pending, but her son-in-law and long-time music 
director, Dennis Michaels, said the burial will be in Forest Lawn in 
Hollywood Hills.


Smith won the first Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or 
Group in 1959 with her late first husband Louis Prima. Together they are 
credited with virtually inventing the Las Vegas lounge act. They won the 
Grammy for the mid-tempo ballad, “That Old Black Magic,” but also had 
lasting influence on the rock generation with Brian Setzer’s recording of 
their “Jump, Jive an' Wail” and David Lee Roth’s version of their hits, 
“Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody.” Smith established a notable solo career 
with her milestone recording of “I Wish You Love” in 1957, produced by 
Nelson Riddle.


Cher was said to have “borrowed” Smith’s deadpan act when she was a young 
singing partner of the late Sonny Bono.


Pat Rizzo, who first saw Louis and Keely in Las Vegas and then became 
Smith's neighbor and occasional musical companion in Palm Springs, called 
her “the greatest entertainer and greatest singer of all time.”


Smith, who made frequent appearances at the McCallum Theatre, had 
pitch-perfect tone and an effortless way of making unorthodox vocal leaps 
seem like natural progressions. She called herself “a saloon singer” like 
Frank Sinatra, with whom she was linked professionally, artistically and in 
her personal life. She received another Grammy nomination for her 2001 CD, 
“Keely Sings Sinatra,” which she recorded with Sinatra’s blessing before his 
death in 1998. The album’s liner notes say Rat Pack pals Dean Martin and 
Sammy Davis Jr. called her “the female Sinatra.”


Sinatra and Smith recorded the duet, “How Are You Fixed For Love?” and 
reportedly began an affair as Smith’s marriage to Prima was faltering. Smith 
told The Desert Sun around the year 1960 that Sinatra had asked her to marry 
him. She signed to his Reprise label in 1961 and recorded another duet 
called “So In Love.” Smith married Reprise producer Jimmy Bowen in 1965, a 
year before he produced Sinatra’s Grammy Award-winning “Strangers in the 
Night.”


Singer Jack Jones, who met Smith when he was beginning his career in Las 
Vegas, said she and Prima had a “wonderful act,” based on wild, crazy humor. 
He said Smith had a voice like none other.


“I don’t know if I’d put anybody up with her,” he said. “She had this 
quality, you could tell it was her. She was a beautiful singer and she just 
had that quality, which was so appealing. A lot of innocence.”


Michaels said Smith started playing deadpan opposite Prima because she was 
so young in the early days of their act that she didn’t know what to do when 
Prima and his band, the Witnesses, started their wild humor act.


Born Dorothy Jacqueline Keely of Cherokee and Irish heritage in Norkfolk, 
Virginia, Smith got her first job as a band singer at age 15 during World 
War II. She joined a group led by Prima, who had written Benny Goodman’s 
Swing Era standard, “Sing, Sing, Sing,” while still a teenager in 1948. They 
were married in 1953. Smith was soon dubbed “the Queen of Las Vegas.”


She parlayed her singing career into success in such movies as “Thunder 
Road,” opposite Robert Mitchum, and “Hey Boy! Hey Girl” and “Senior Prom” 
with Prima.


“In later years,” said Jones, “she was a complete extrovert – fun and crazy. 
I really enjoyed knowing her.”


After divorcing from Bowen, Smith began a long relationship with Palm 
Springs-based singer Bobby Milano in the mid-1970s. Milano, whose real name 
was Charles Caci, was the brother of Southern California mob leader Vincent 
"Jimmy" Caci, and Smith also maintained a friendship with Chicago mob boss 
Sam Giancana, notably attending his funeral after his assassination in 1975.


But Milano also was a fine jazz-pop singer in the local music scene, often 
working with singer-pianist Michaels, who married Smith’s daughter, Toni 
Prima. Milano not only produced Smith’s acclaimed Sinatra tribute, with 
Michaels creating the arrangements, but teamed with Michaels and Smith on 
the excellent “Keel Swings Basie-Style” and “Swing, Swing, Swing,” featuring 
a recording of Slim Gaillard’s “Palm Springs Jump” that Lucie Arnaz has 
since perpetuated as a Palm Springs theme song. Smith toured with Michaels 
as her music director for 25 years.


“She was probably one of the greatest female pop-jazz singers this country 
has ever produced,” said Michaels. “There would be times during a concert I 
would actually stop playing and just sit and listen. With a full orchestra, 
you could do that. But there were times where she just astounded me with her 
intonation and her interpretation of the lyrics and just incredible voice.”


Michaels noted she took more vocal risks as a jazz singer in her later years 
and really did reinvent herself from being primarily a lounge entertainer.


“One of her favorite things to do, even with a full orchestra, was to get in 
the curve of the concert grand piano and take her shoes off and just sing 
with the piano," Michaels said. "She would rather do that than anything. She 
obviously enjoyed singing with the orchestra. But I think because of her 
emotional connection to a lyric, she really enjoyed that intimate moment 
with the piano.”


Smith appeared on the 50th anniversary of the Grammys telecast in 2008, 
performing a duet of “That Old Black Magic” with Kid Rock. She made her last 
public appearance in 2011 at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center. Later that 
year, she performed at the late golf pro Ken Venturi's 80th birthday party.


Smith has stars on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars (at 111 S. Palm Canyon 
Drive) and the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 7080 Hollywood Blvd.) and she is a 
member of the Las Vegas Hall of Fame.

  She is survived by her daughters Toni Prima of Palm Springs and Luanne 
Prima of Los Angeles. -30



Bob Ringwald piano, Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet, Quintet
Fulton Street Jazz Band (Dixieland/Swing)
916/ 806-9551
Check out my performing schedule: www.ringwald.com/schedule.php
Amateur (ham) Radio Station K6YBV

“If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed,
if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.” -- Mark Twain



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